Bus Rides – A Review

Busses and I have had a fickle relationship.

For the most part, they’ve been a source of entertainment. Busses have better people watching than subways. Period.

But, they’re also unreliable. I’m not the first to suggest that busses live on their on whims and their own time, but it’s very clear when it comes to time they don’t care for mine.

They’re nice because they’re just about everywhere. They’re easy to use, once you get the hang of things, and they don’t force you to walk half a mile to where you need to go.

Busses also are the homes of some of my fond memories from my childhood. Well. I use the term fond lightly. I remember, the day I got my first cellphone, the kid sitting in front of me asked to see it and pretended to throw it out the bus window.

That’s really the only one that sticks out, to be honest. All the rest involve heading to a track meet, or something… I don’t remember where we were going, just that it kind of smelled awful. So, it must have been sports.

Now, I still ride busses for school, albeit in a different capacity. Busses went from being a pretty mediocre part of my life to this whole thing I have to plan my day around.

To be clear, field trip days are extremely stressful as a teacher. There’s so much to think about when it comes to safety, time, trash, and behavior management. Then there’s norming that all amongst anywhere between 3-7 teachers. It’s a veritable logistical hula hoop.

For the majority of trips, I just end up standing up in the center of the bus for the entirety of the ride. It’s just less anxiety inducing.

And that’s what I did today, heading to a museum in Long Island. Only, instead of going to Long Island, our bus driver was taking us to the wrong address and brought us into Manhattan. Yikes.

Eventually we turned around and headed the right direction, but by then we were already an hour off schedule.

We got to the museum late, and while the students didn’t seem to mind, all of the teachers looked stressed.

We left the museum after about an hour. Then we started heading home.

Well.

Started is a rough word here.

See, some sort of tube or gasket broke while we were driving back, sending water all over the place behind us. The other bus (luckily driving behind us) called our driver and told him to pull over.

I’m not exactly sure what the problem was, but it meant we were stranded on what essentially amounted to an exit ramp while we waited for a solution.

It took about 30 minutes for us to come up with a plan on how to get home. It almost made more sense to send us home in a fleet of Ubers than it did to wait the two hours for another bus to come.

But, we waited. With starving and thirsty students in our bus. Just doing what we could to keep from overheating.

Eventually, I told a staff member that was on the bus with us that I was going to run to the market and just buy a huge case of waters. It was half a mile away, and if I ran, I’d be back with plenty of time to spare.

They said, hold on let’s figure this out. And we waited

And waited.

And I had to tell the kids to wait when they told me they were hungry. When they told me they were thirsty.

Eventually the staff member called me off of the bus and I was gearing up to actually sprint to this corner store. But when I stepped outside, they told me they ordered an Uber and we were just going to drive to an Aldi’s that was inside a mall. Less adventurous, but probably the smarter call.

Eventually, we made it back with food and water. Thirty minutes later the second bus arrived, we got on it and headed to school. I don’t have to tell you that I stood the entire way back. Less anxiety that way.

Let me tell you, I’m exhausted.

Thanks for reading.

Have a great week!